engleski

Energy harvesting technologies for structural health monitoring of airplane components – A review

With the aim of increasing the efficiency of maintenance and fuel usage in airplanes, structural health monitoring (SHM) of critical composite structures is increasingly expected and required. The optimized usage of this concept is subject of intensive work in the framework of the EU COST Action CA18203 “Optimising Design for Inspection” (ODIN). In this context, a thorough review of a broad range of energy harvesting (EH) technologies to be potentially used as power sources for the acoustic emission and guided wave propagation sensors of the considered SHM systems, as well as for the respective data elaboration and wireless communication modules, is provided in this work. EH devices based on the usage of kinetic energy, thermal gradients, solar radiation, airflow and other viable energy sources, proposed so far in literature, are thus described with a critical review of the respective specific power levels, of their potential placement on airplanes as well as of the thus needed power management architectures. The provided guidelines for the selection of the most appropriate EH and power management technologies create the preconditions to develop a new class of autonomous sensor nodes for in- process non- destructive SHM of airplane components.

energy harvesting ; airplane ; non-destructive evaluation ; kinetic ; thermoelectric ; solar ; smart skin ; power management

ODIN Cost Action